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The team from Charity Navigator, the nation's largest independent charity evaluator and leading donor advocate, shares their thoughts on emerging nonprofit-sector issues and offers tips to better inform your intelligent giving decisions.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Coins And Trinkets – Do We Want It In Our Charity Appeals?

We’ve all opened our mailbox to find a charity appeal stuffed with address labels, trinkets and even money. Most donors find this incredibly frustrating. We want our contributions spent on the charity’s mission, not on expensive mailings. In USA Today, our president & CEO, Ken Berger, said it this way "whether its money, junk or knick, knack, paddy whack, we don't want it. We want to see charities using every nickel, penny and dime we send them." But Melissa Brown, associate director of research at the Center on Philanthropy, points out that charities “wouldn't do it if it didn't work."

What do you think about these mailings? Have you received a mailing with money? Did it motivate you to support the charity or to refrain from sending the charity another donation? Take our poll and let us know.

3 comments:

If it's a charity I don't know, I throw out the mailing and decide to never send a donation. One charity aimed at helping poor children actually sent a good pair of cotton socks in their solicitation--socks children could certainly use! Sure made me angry.

If it's a charity I've supported in the past, I reply with a note of complaint, and request no more coins/trinkets mailings. If they don't follow my request, I take them off my donations list.

If they are professional, they should do whatever they can to maximize the benefit for their beneficiaries, including pesky mailings. On condition they are transparent about costs and benefits of course

I might send a small donation, but keep the coins and send a note that sending coins is extremely annoying, and that I won't support them again because of that. It seems more and more charities are trying to guilt people into donating by sending coins.